Truss Rod Installation and Fingerboard Prep

I installed the truss rod per StewMac instructions, with dabs of silicone at each end and a couple points in the middle.  I didn't know how close to get on top-to-bottom clearance of the brass end blocks in the slots, so I shimmed them up 8 thousandths with two tiny sheets of steel snipped and filed from an old feeler gauge.

Since they were under the silicone, I figure they won't rattle.  If they do, I can always remove the guitar neck, make careful preparations, and light the POS on fire.

The next day I cut the fingerboard edges to the taper of the neck.  I did this by laying the face of the neck, which is just about to final width, on the un-curved back of the fingerboard.  I centered it and ran a pencil down both edges.  Then had a problem, because I wanted to use the bandsaw but didn't want the down-running blade to pull chips out of the fingerboard face.  Even with tape I was concerned about that.  So I transfered the lines to the front, which is inexact - the lines on back were a copy of the neck taper, but the lines on the front would be perfectly straight like my straightedge.  Now, I made those edges as straight as I could with sandpaper and my Surform cheesegrater, but it's still not the same.  So I resolved to leave the pencil marks when I cut from the top of the fingerboard.

It worked okay.  Here's the neck with truss rod installed, and the tapered fingerboard:

Here's the spoke nut of the truss rod sticking out the heel of the neck:

I couldn't figure out how to drill a 3/8" hole into one edge of a 7/32" notch.  For a week I carried the neck in my car, thinking to ask someone if I could borrow a drill press.  I kept forgetting, and also wondered if there'd be a way to clamp such a long piece end-on - maybe by turning the work table vertical and rotating it out of the vertical axis of the drill, clamping the neck to the vertical work table at a careful angle?  Then finally I decided to just make it happen freehand, even if I had to hand-ream the thing with a naked drill bit.  I used an electric hand drill with a 5/16" bit that I placed into the deep end of the slot, measuring the center as carefully as I could.  I used this bit a little like a drill and a little like a file.  Then I moved up to the 3/8" and repeated the operation carefully.  It worked.

This highlights another issue I have with any long-running project:  fatigue.  On the one hand, I knew I could get away with screwing up the hole in the heel of the neck a little bit, because it would hardly be visible.  On the other hand, I could have done it much more safely, for instance by clamping a 3/4" thick piece of hardwood across the end of the neck and drilling through it as a proxy piece of wood (compensating for the empty slot).  I didn't find out about that trick until after I used the drill.

I am most vulnerable to the temptation to take a shortcut when:

1. I've been blocked for some time  from working on the project, either by technical barriers or lack of time, and I feel the need to "catch up" to some imaginary timetable
2. There seems to be no one correct, clean way to approach the task, and no way for me to decide between the two, other than by making somebody else do the work

Any project, large or small, can be seen as a struggle to take exactly the time required by me to do the job as safely and correctly as possible, no more or less.  Once I start comparing my performance to some mythical notion I have in my head, I'm liable to go all freestyle.  Sometimes that works.

I am a monkey.

Finalish Neck Thicknessing

I wanted to make the headstock 1/2" thick, and main part of the neck 3/4".  I could have done it a couple ways, I guess:

1. Band saw the wide way, then clean up with the router and thickness fixture
2. Route in increments until complete

I don't trust my band saw skills or my band saw setup enough for the first approach.  The second approach, however, filled my entire basement workshop area with a fine sawdust.  Why was I not informed about this?  It's everywhere.  Everywhere!  In fact, I thought I would be working on this guitar until I died of old age, but now I think I'm racing against lung disease.  Thankfully, I think that was the last of the major thicknessing operations.

Here's the nasty-looking step-down in back of the nut, which will need some serious work with the Stanley Surform cheese grater:

I think I'll clean up some of these messes and then see about finishing up the truss rod and attaching the fingerboard, in preparation for fretting.

Shaping the Neck to Almost Final Width

The band saw I used was not accurate enough to make the neck sides perfectly flat or straight, and really blaming the tool is rather sad.  It's because of me.  So now I have to take the sides down.  I use a Stanley Surform with a flat grater to get pretty close, and then 120 grit sandpaper for the final approach.  However, the amount of surface area is key to sanding progress so I began to profile the back of the neck so I didn't have to flatten all that wood.  Like so:

I made a thing to hold the neck on its side where I can grate it properly:

I grate the neck with a Stanley Surform.  It gets pretty good traction if I apply a little pressure.  I think the fibergass/epoxy layer gives it a hard time.

Summary of Guitar Build So Far

This is the build summary so far:

1.  Project overview and basic neck materials:  Fiberglass, two-part epoxy and basswood
2.  Making a heat box for curing the epoxy
3.  Assembling and curing the laminate
4. How not to cut the laminate, part one and part two
5. And God created the band saw
6. A whole bunch of parts arrive
7. A guitar-like shape occurs
8. Flattening the laminate
9. Cutting the truss rod channel

Cutting a Truss Rod Slot

It's time to cut the truss rod slot, because the back of the neck is still flat and the face of the neck is just about ready for the fingerboard.  Next I think I have to thickness the back of the "thin part" of the neck down to 3/4", but leave the headstock material there, and once I do that, things will get rough in Flatworld. Once I do this, I'll never be able to lay the neck flat again easily:

The next operation after that will involve gluing on the fingerboard, profiling the back of the neck (into an approximate "C" shape) or both, and the neck will start getting lumpy, bumpy, rounded and so forth.

I had trouble routing this laminate before (see here), but I think that was because I took too much at a time.  I've successfully routed into and through epoxy layers in my thicknessing operations, leading me to believe that if I go slow I won't start any fires.  So I made a setup to guide the router:

I got the correct 7/32" router bit at Ring's End.  I checked the aluminum for straightness.  I took into account that my router base has a radius of slightly less than 3" (2 63/64" or so).  I measured with a metal ruler that goes down to 64ths.  As my grandfather never would have said, "measure 2,028,887 times, cut 2300 times."  I tried to always keep the router pinned to the guide, but without pushing hard enough to risk moving the guide itself.  I cut in small increments, about five passes.  And still I screwed it up!  

Excellent.

That's the truss rod, laying next to its future home.  I created two problems, both recoverable:

1. The slot is about 1/64th to the right of where it should be.  This is due to me being a poor craftsman and a bad judge of distances.   But I've haven't filed the neck to its final width, and I have that much room over on the right if I want it.
2. I goofed up twice and the bit cut toward me in two spots.  Not too terrible; I think it's visible in the image.  I'm going to hide that under the fingerboard.  This happened because I was trying to push back hard, but not too hard, while moving the router left, but not too quickly, while also thinking about how horrible it would be if I screwed up.

Whew.

Using the Custom Board Flattening Router Jig...Thingy

Well!  All I can say is, don't do this.  Not at home, even.  Certainly don't post it on the internet, because sure as the sun comes up, somebody is going to laugh at you.  FYI, I had to take the two center braces off again (drilling out rivets and making new holes) to space the center part wide enough to fit the headstock.  I am extremely tired of aluminum and pop rivets.

This silly little plastic-coated MDF folding table is the single best (usable by me) oasis of flatness in my house!  You should have seen me with the carpenter's square, measuring the basement floor and every beaten-up old desk (there are two).  This thing was a miracle where I least expected it.  But it's not perfect, and certainly the board I'm working on isn't either, so when I clamped the headstock end, I had to weight down the middle to press the other end to the surface.  The dumbbell weights are balanced across the neck on a piece of mild steel left over from a previous laughable project.  This configuration gets me additional clearance for my router grips as I work from the side.

Then I put the weights on the end and did the middle.  I came up with some reasonable flatness.  It's still bowed down in the middle a little, and I have theories as to why, but I don't really care.  I'm calling it good because it's even and reasonably consistent.  I can adjust it with the truss rod, or externally, when it's time to level the frets.  I will probably apply some 220-grit paper to my 1/4" glass and clean it up ever so slightly, then I'll call it good.

I got into the periphery of the epoxy zone at the boundary of this slice of 1/16" basswood - you can see the blue.  I've got a couple of choices here:

1. Epoxy on another fiberglass/basswood layer and give myself some wood to glue onto (with the obligatory flattening step, which may not work because that much wood might well make the piece too thick to fit under my flattening jig)
2. Glue the fingerboard on with epoxy.  Sounds good to me.  If I find myself with a guitar neck that's so screwed up that I am facing the prospect of taking the fretboard back off, I'm pretty much going to be starting again probably.

This was a very tense operation for me.  One serious mistake and I'd have been facing a total do-over, which isn't as bad as it sounds:  I think I could get back to this point within a week if I had to, knowing what I know now (and having what I have now).  But I really, really didn't care to find out.  Now I've got to be doubly careful of those nice sharp corners.  The neck piece is acquiring delicacy along with its flatness.  Very strange.

Custom Board Flattening Router Jig

I had an idea.  I made a jig for my router that sits over the board and may or may not flatten the face of the neck.

I got some angle aluminum and 3/16" pop rivets and a pop rivet gun.  I looked at the angle steel but it was not even remotely straight, and I have no good way of cutting it.  I cut the aluminum with a hacksaw, as most of the lengths were longer than the 12" my band saw can accommodate.  I made the bracket you see, minus the two inner struts parallel to the guitar neck.  A bracket that wide would be versatile - that was my reasoning.  It would be good for all kinds of flattening jobs.

It made a clean test cut, but the router dipped in the middle and the face of the test board was concave or cupped.  So I added those two inner braces, 3" apart, to keep the sag down.  Along the way, I put rivets in the wrong places, facing the wrong way, drilled them out poorly, you name it.  In addition I somehow inserted the tip of a brand new hobby knife (#11) into the meat at the heel of my thumb, and my unused 3/16" drill bit got dull already.  

Good times.

This is what the router would see, if a router had eyes and a nervous system:

I'm going to have to pick up a piece of 1"x3" or similar, find a truly flat place to stage this (maybe my dad's table saw table), and flatten at least a one-foot length.  Only then will I feel reasonably safe in trying to flatten my guitar neck.